2 Reales - Felipe IV

Felipe IV's reign saw the Lima mint operating under chronic pressure from the viceregal administration to meet remittance quotas for the Crown, and the cob coinage of this period reflects that urgency — hand-cut planchets, irregular flans, and rotary dies worked well past their useful life. The late 1650s were particularly turbulent: Lima's assayers were under investigation for systematic fineness fraud that had been running since at least the 1640s, implicating the entire colonial minting apparatus from Mexico City to Potosí.

The Lima 2 Reales of this window are scarcer than equivalent Potosí product simply because Lima's output volumes were a fraction of the great mountain mint's.